I am almost finished my Masters degree in Educational Technology at UBC … just one course to go. Actually less, since I’m more than half-way through the last course.
Here’s the major paper that I wrote for ETEC 530, my current course. The basic thesis? Constructivism, the current hottest paradigm in education du jour, is all about how students learn. However, the literature is all about how teachers need to teach. Somewhere, there seems to be a disconnect:
I was thinking about technology the other day at a Learning Series Alliance conference put on by Intel in Las Vegas.
Teachers are at one time the biggest problem and the greatest asset for any transformation project in education. That’s simply because people are the biggest problem and greatest asset for any organizational change in any institution, and teachers are the biggest group of employees in most education systems.
When it comes to technology, teachers are all at varying levels of comfort and capability. The reality is, unfortunately, that many of the current teachers in North America and western Europe cut their teaching teeth on chalkboards, paper, and pencils … and technology (especially student laptop programs) takes that whole paradigm and flushes it viciously down the toilet. The pedagogy – science and art of teacher – needs to change when the kids get information and creation appliances. But most teachers haven’t been educated, trained, or raised in an information-intensive learning environment.
Which brings up tools, technology, and magic.
Tools are things we know, are familiar with, and don’t even think about. Think hammers, shovels, and pencils.
Technology is simply a conglomeration of all tools that were invented and popularized after we were kids. Think computers, flatscreens, and Tesla electric vehicles.
Magic is stuff that is so amazing we can’t even imagine fully understanding it and using it. Think particle accelerators, ion drives, and fusion generators.
See the similarities?
Scientist and author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The problem in education is that too many teachers are in that phase.
Many people now view most technology – PCs, software, web apps – as simple tools. They are understandable, useful, and comfortable. That group, however, is dwarfed by the huge cohort that views that same set of of tools as technology: stuff invented since I was in high school that I use but that are not really, completely, and totally native to me. And, on the far side of the bell curve is a still large group – probably larger than the tool natives – who view this same basic set of technology tools as magic.
This is a key problem when introducing technology into schools.
Accelerating change in education to better use technology to enhance learning depends on at least two things:
One: critical mass
Moving a critical mass of teachers at least one step up this chain … so that the magic teachers are now tool technology teachers, and the technology teachers are tool users, and the tool users are expert engineers.
Two: pedagogy
Popularizing and standardizing the excellent knowledge, skills, and tactics that have already been developed for technology-rich education so that they are as standard and obvious to teachers and textbooks, chalk, and pencils have been for decades.
Here’s one from the “Seriously, you didn’t think this was a bad idea?” files: the Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, has been accused of remotely activating the webcams in its students’ laptops issued through their 1:1 program without the students’ knowledge or consent. While the case has yet to see a courtroom, it looks to be ugly for the school district and potentially detrimental to other 1:1 programs nationwide.
via Webcams gone wrong: School sued for remote activation | Education IT | ZDNet.com.
This video is a little slow and repetitive … but in 3 minutes it gets the message across: online learning is not correspondence learning on a computer.
(Or … it should not be!)
ScrollMotion’s been tapped to transmogrify textbooks published by McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and every standardized test-taking student’s favorite, Kaplan.
. . .
If you’ve over-analyzed the iPad keynote as much as we have, by now you’ve probably gotten the distinct sense that something felt like it was missing. One of those things, apparently, were Apple’s ideas about re-inventing the textbook.
via A Peek at Apple’s Plans to Re-invent Textbooks – ipad – Gizmodo.
“Most eBook readers, for whatever reason, are priced at about the level of a low-end netbook, which proves to be a significant barrier,” Mitchell said. “A tablet that is both an eBook reader and a netbook-like device would make it much more attractive to your everyday user. Plus, interactivity will bring new content and media that hasn’t been imagined yet.”
Analysts estimate it has sold 3 million Kindles, and Amazon says it now sells six Kindle books for every 10 printed copies of books that are available in both formats.
via Apple’s own approach to iPad e-books could confuse – BostonHerald.com.
What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.
For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the “average person.” I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.
Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.
The bet is roughly that the future of computing:
1. has a UI model based on direct manipulation of data objects
2. completely hides the filesystem from the user
3. favors ease of use and reduction of complexity over absolute flexibility
4. favors benefit to the end-user rather than the developer or other vendors
5. lives atop built-to-specific-purpose native applications and universally available web apps
via stevenf.com – I need to talk to you about computers. I’ve been….
We are no longer just consumers of content, we have become curators of it too.
If someone approached me even five years ago and explained that one day in the near future I would be filtering, collecting and sharing content for thousands of perfect strangers to read — and doing it for free — I would have responded with a pretty perplexed look. Yet today I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t filter, collect and share.
via ‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.
Washington state high-school students can now opt out of certain traditional elective classes at their schools, instead taking a limited number of online courses in game design, 3-D animation, video production and other technology subjects.
The for-credit classes, free to most students, supplement normal core courses, allowing students to stay enrolled in their high schools while taking some elective classes their schools do not offer.
It's all possible through a new partnership, announced earlier this month, between the White Salmon Valley School District and Giant Campus, a national online technology-education company.
via Education | High-tech electives go online for teens | Seattle Times Newspaper.
C.S.H.B. 4294 amends the Education Code to authorize use of the state textbook fund for the purchase of technological equipment. The bill requires the commissioner of education to adopt a list of electronic textbooks and instructional material that conveys information to the student or otherwise contributes to the learning process. The bill authorizes a school district to select an electronic textbook or instructional material on the commissioner's list to be funded by the state textbook fund.
via 81(R) HB 4294 – Committee Report (Substituted) version – Bill Analysis.
“The budget was about 20 percent of what we normally would charge,” said Greer. “After one meeting with the client, almost all our communication was by e-mail. The script was developed and approved using a collaborative tool provided by http://www.box.net. Internally, we all could look at the script no matter where we were, make suggestions and get to a final draft with complete transparency — easy, convenient and free. We did not have a budget to shoot new footage, yet we had no budget either for stock photography the old way — paying royalties of $100 to $2,000 per image. We found a source, istockphoto.com, which offered great photos for as little as a few dollars.
“We could easily preview all the images, place them in our program to make sure they worked, purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions — all in seconds,” Greer added. “We had a script that called for 4 to 5 voices. Rather than hiring local voice talent — for $250 to $500 per hour — we searched the Internet for high-quality voices that we could afford. We found several sites offering various forms of narration or voice-overs. We selected http://www.voices.com. In less than one minute, we created an account, posted our requirements and solicited bids. Within five minutes, we had 10 to 15 ‘applicants’ ” — charging 10 percent of what Greer would have paid live talent.
via Op-Ed Columnist – The Do-It-Yourself Economy – NYTimes.com.
I think the kids could be a little less I’m-a-very-sad-refugee-and-can’t-smile, but overall I like the message of this video:
This is interesting, particularly as a test for e-ink; however, it is worth noting that the VitalSource Library has been delivered on over ~400,000 computers in K-12. The Library includes over 2500 classics from literature, history, and the arts, as well as a dictionary (Oxford or Houghton-Mifflin) and, depending on the version, thesaurus or encyclopedia (Britannica).
Most private schools with laptop programs include the product in their image and LAUSD (the second largest school system) images it all instructional machines (Gateway, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Apple). As I believe you (David) know, VitalSource’s BookShelf software takes full advantage of the digital environment with an XML-based format that is reflowable and searchable (across entire libraries of content and notes). Learners can also highlight, takes notes and share notes with other BookShelf users.
Very smart idea from Charlene Li for all those school sign-up sheets we get bombarding our home:
Everywhere everyone complains about information overload. Forget the 1000-channel universe – we’re dealing with the million-channel universe … times 10.
There’s too much news, too many new technologies, too much information, too many tweets, too many great blog posts, too many ads, too much of everything. As we’ve been saying for years, it’s an attention economy and the scarcity is in our heads.
Here’s how I deal with information overload – mostly influenced by Dave Winer, who invented the “river of news” concept, in addition to a bunch of other interesting and ubiquitous stuff like RSS.
The stream is there. The stream is flowing. I can’t stop right river, and I can’t stop the water. Building a dam is just a temporary solution, as eventually, after backing up, the water will start flowing again, either over my dam or around it.
So …
And when I don’t have time, I don’t. When I don’t feel like it, I don’t. When I’m too busy, I don’t. And don’t stress about it either.
There’s a simple realization inherent in this: there’s just too much to keep up. Maybe there always has been, in spite of a perception that “all the news that’s fit to print” was in the dead tree thing that appeared on your doorstep in the afternoon. So there’s no point trying. In fact, if something is important enough … it will find you.
Adopting this attitude is a wonderful stress reliever if you are the type (seemingly more common in older generations) that feels a need to keep up with everything.
It certainly has been for me.
I recently met Doru Ilasi at eLiberatica 2009. He’s the executive manager of Aplix Software, and we chatted about open source and education for a few minutes.
He had mentioned a TED presentation on creative commons educational material, and just today passed on a link to the movie. It didn’t click for me when we were chatting, but when I watched Richard Baraniuk give the presentation, I remembered checking out the Connexions website a few years ago.
Here’s the video – it’s well worth a few minutes. Inspiring!
As I look past the wing of the airplane down to the patchwork German countryside, I can almost believe the illusion that the earth is sliding past while I and the plane are stationary. It’s an easy illusion to indulge in, because as I leave Romania and Bucharest the experiences I had there in such a short time are so vivid in my memory.
All the memories jumble up as I try to record them here … arriving at 11:30 PM and strolling, jet-lagged, through midnight streets … photowalking through old Bucharest … swordfighting at Vlad Tepes’ castle … lunches and dinners with amazing people like MySQL founders David Axmark and Monty Widenius, Free Software Foundation Europe president Georg Greve, Fedora EMEA vice-president Jeroen van Meeuwen, Spanish open-source advocate Ismael Olea … the list goes on and on.
“Open source diva” Danese Cooper is a really fun speaker to listen to, and she’s worked for practically every company that matters (except for IBM, as she told me).
The people at Agora Media were amazing as well … Rom (the first person I know who is actually called Romulus, which for a guy with a modest dose of Star Trek Virus™ like me is pretty cool) Maier … Anca, who took care of us as no-one else could … Andreea …. Oana, who took pity on me and showed me a couple of dance moves so I didn’t make a complete idiot of myself at the club (hey, 99% is NOT 100!) … and many others as well.
But it was a great thrill to see the people of Romania, especially the students and IT people who came to the conference. Smart, dedicated, passionate … they are intensively switched-on. It was such a privilege to wander the halls during the conference and meet them, ask questions about what they were studying or working on, and learn about their worlds.
The after-conference party was a ton of fun, and while I don’t have a hope of remembering all names of the people I met, a bunch of us have already connected on Twitter and I’m looking forward to staying in touch that way.
I’m going to put other recollections and thoughts, along with photos, in other blog posts …. keep posted.
Valer Mischenko of NLnet is speaking at eLiberatica on free and open source business models. One slide in which he contrasts business models particularly caught my eye:
| Proprietary business model: WAR | Open source business model: OPEN |
| – World as battlefield | – World as construction site |
| – Kill competitor | – Defend the concept |
| – Occupy and defend territory | – Encourage to join in |
| – Seal all ways out | – Offer new free territories |
| – Spy (on customers) | – Open all ways |
| – Keep all information secret | – Transparent |
| – Propaganda as important weapon | – Keep all information open |
| – Punish any freedom attempts | – Advantages are evident |
Interesting! I’ll have to digest this a bit and see if I totally agree.
It’s 2 AM in Bucharest and the dogs are barking in the distance.
I’m in town for eLiberatica, a conference on open source software, and I’ll be speaking tomorrow today, but I’m fully jet lagged and in spite of the fact that I was up and traveling for about 32 hours straight, my body has no desire for sleep. This is going to be interesting.
The hotel is an interesting mix of modern art/decor and 19th century eastern European. The spaciousness, funky color scheme, and contemporary furniture is the modern part; the unhappily combined lack of adequate A/C and window screens is the 19th century part. I’m not quite sure where the pirated stations on the 20″ CRT TV or the pulsating rhythms of the first-floor bar fit.
I came in at about 11 PM last night, was massively overcharged by an unscrupulous cab driver who expertly inferred my lack of local savoir faire, and took a brief stroll around midnight before coming up to fail miserably at the one task that matters right now: sleep.
At least the location is good – I’m about a block and a half from the Romanian Palace of the Parliament. Here’s a pic I’ve filched from Wikipedia:
And the neighborhood is intensely … interesting, from what I could tell of it during a late night stroll. Lots of graffiti, which makes you think a bit, but also lots of people including couples and women out late at night. Some amazingly interesting architecture – I can’t wait for a daytime photowalk. At the risk of over-generalizing from an insufficient sample size, I’m guessing turn-of-the-century Romanian design was not about minimalism.
Ah well, it’s now 2:39, according to my trusy iPhone connecting to RO Vodafone, and 6:39 “home time.” Time for another attempt at counting those bloody sheep.
Good night, or something …
Maine is planning to expand its seven year old 1:1 computing initiative to 100,000 students.
Currently, the state provides 37,000 Apple MacBooks for students in grades 7 through 12, plus 10,000 teachers and administrators. Now they’re looking to expand to serve an additional 53,000 high school students.
This is one of the largest 1:1 computing experiments in education, though it could pale in comparison to the 1,000,000 Classmate PCs Venezuela has ordered. So, what’s the cost to the state of Maine? According to Ars Technica …
The state would like to pay $242 per year for each MacBook, for a grand total of $25 million per year, or about twice what Maine is currently paying for 37,000 notebooks.
More details at Ars Technica and the AP on Google.
Wow. This is great – you can’t invent stuff this good.
Sony has had a digital reader product for some time now: Reader Digital Book. Lately Amazon refreshed its Kindle, and is of course getting much more virtual ink.
So here’s a small piece of Sony’s marketing campaign that I stumbled across during a routine Google search:
Re-kindle your love for reading indeed!
I’m in Victoria, BC today, right by the beautiful Inner Harbour:
It’s beautiful but cold – about 4 or 5 Celsius. Later today I have a meeting with James Shypitka, the CIO of the BC Ministry of Education. Hoping to learn more about what BC is doing in terms of educational technology.
This is a 2700-word paper for ETEC 533, a course in my Master of Educational Technology program at UBC.
Excerpt:
But when just about anything anyone wants to know is a simple search away, what, specifically, constitutes education in the age of Google? And, is it enough to know about, without knowing how, or why?
This paper is inspired by Nicholas Carr’s widely read Is Google Making Us Stupid? That being the case, of course, I have absolutely no expectation that any of you will actually read the entire thing.
But you may wish to skim …
This is a cross-post from my ETEC 533 blog, Technology in Math & Science Classes.
For me, a central concern in technology and teaching today should be: what does intelligence mean?
Of course, questions of what intelligence is have been with us for decades if not centuries. And the answer is very likely: there’s different kinds of smart.
But what do school optimize for?
Do they optimize for retention? For synthesis? For investigative skill? Or for sheer intellectual horsepower that powers through tough learning challenges? And, of course, we haven’t even talked about any of Gardner’s physical or musicla intelligences yet, or Goleman’s emotional.
None of this is clear.
What is clear is that teaching someone to be smart in a networked 21st century is a different proposition than teaching someone to be smart in a paper 18th century … just as that was different than teaching someone to be smart in an oral 5th century AD.
But sheer intelligence … has that changed at all?
Going to the oracle of Delphi, as a teacher I interviewed referred to Google, doesn’t make someone smart. And blind reliance on canned answers might be as dangerous and prehistorical obedience to cryptic priestly incantations. But distributed memory and cognition is surely an aide to the wise.
It strikes me that we don’t understand these issues as well as we should.
I’ve been using Twitter for probably over a year. But I’ve really only being using Twitter for perhaps 3 months.
In that time, there’s a few things that I think would add huge value to Twitter:
I’d like to be able to categorize followers – and people I’m following. Better yet, do it for me: geographically, by industry … and let me tag them.
I think I’d even settle for sortable following/follower lists …
I’m not in the make-Twitter-do-everything camp. It’s simple, and that’s great. But would just a few more features to improve the signal-to-noise ratio be so bad?
BTW, here I am on Twitter. Follow me!
Chinook school district in southern Saskatchewan just doled out $200K worth of payola to the Business Software Alliance.
The problem? Some drafting software that was accidentally copied on to all computers in a lab during an upgrade.
The BSA came calling – rather like the RIAA – and demanded more than twice the MSRP … almost $650,000. It’s almost like the local “business protection association” run by burly men with bent noses and Italian accents.
But here’s the kicker:
Because the incident was not a budgeted item, the school division has to identify areas of cost savings in its system. In particular, Choo-Foo said the division is looking at some of its licensing agreements. “We’re moving more into the direction of freeware and shareware that’s available, and finding products that still meet our needs.”
The BSA won this battle. But it’s likely going to lose the war …
OK, this is seriously funny. The latest Dilbert strips have been focused on Dilbert’s second job: DilbertFiles.
Funny, good, enjoyable … but just a comic. Or not?
Wondering a little – because I’ve read Scott Adams‘ books and know how smart he is in spite of his constant and nearly-successful attempts to hide it – I decided to check out dilbertfiles.com.
Lo and behold … there’s an actual website there:
And an actual business, to all intents and purposes. Now, because Scott Adams is congenitally disinclined to anything approaching actual work, he must have simply struck a deal with a file transfer company to re-brand their solution for him. As if the guy doesn’t have enough money already.
Life imitating art, huh? Actually, in more ways than you might notice.
As completely appropriate for our favorite corporate drone, DilbertFiles’ uploader software only supports Windows!
It’s the cherry on the cake, obviously.
